F-35 Engines from United Technologies Called Unreliable by GAO

F-35 tries doing so many things and fails in almost all of them. The complexity of engine given the whole STOVL based frame and design is the culprit here. One plane to rule them all is still a bad idea, given the complexity of these machines. There are many lessons for any kind of system design and development in this whole story.

A large part of the criticism was around whether a single engine jet was really appropriate for patrolling the Canadian Arctic. I imagine that rhetoric is going to get ramped up as reports of that single engine being unreliable surface.

I was about to point out the same thing. I left shortly before the program got cut. Everyone saw the writing on the wall.

I remember some talk about it being more about politics than saving money. I can't remember what politician it was, but they were one of the big pushers of closing down GE's alternative engine program, which was convenient since they were from Connecticut where Pratt & Whitney is located (If I remember correctly).

Basically they wanted their state to benefit exclusively.

Not to say GE's engine would be in much better shape right now either. I am really not sure what the right decision would have been.

The plane flies; but I wonder what we're doing putting humans in an airplane at all at this point. The amount of additional engineering that has to be done to support a human in the cockpit is crazy -- life support systems, multiple redundant flight control systems, etc. All of these have maintenance schedules, checklists and protocols that make them very expensive to operate. By the time this weapons system is operational, it will be obsolete.

I would maybe understand if the goal of this program was to produce a weapons system that was a great leap forward in performance, but the F-35 was never designed to be that. It was supposed to remove the need for 3 or 4 different specialized aircraft by creating a general-purpose platform that can serve in multiple roles. It's essentially a cost-reduction program that basically fails at reducing costs because of the additional overhead some of the requirements brought.

In its current iteration, it doesn't do that, and having a single-engine fighter jet is a colossally stupid idea. In the event of engine failure, the pilot has no choice but to eject because fighters are far less aerodynamically stable than passenger planes, and with no engine power, the plane wouldn't be controllable. You don't have these problems in two-engine fighters -- if one engine goes out, you can still limp back to base and land the plane. So your single engine has to be that much more powerful and reliable, which leads to an engine that is more expensive to buy and that needs to be maintained more often. So they ultimately fail in reducing cost and complexity.

For the roles the F-35 will be appropriate for by the time it's finished, drones will be a much better option. The F-35 is explicitly not an air superiority fighter (a role human pilots are still better suited for, and for which the F-22 is a far superior aircraft), and most of the ground support and reconnaissance roles the F-35 is supposed to play are already handled by drones today.

The program only exists because big defense programs are parceled out to congressional districts, whose representatives are loathe to lose the jobs. I don't think the military even wants it that badly at this point.

There is a very illuminating video on Youtube by designer of F-16 and A-10 about F-35. Please remember F-22 is a very expensive plane and great for Air superiority, but you need planes in other roles. The Airforce in their sexy trip are trying to replace the reliable A-10 with the F-35. F-35 for ground support, bad bad bad idea, but the guys in Airforce have careers and they will have to move the needle, if you think about it, the military bureaucracy is its own worst enemy.